Uganda's State Minister for Health called for community education on clubfoot, rejecting witchcraft explanations and urging early medical treatment for affected children.
In Luweero district, Uganda's State Minister for Health, Anifa Kawooya, stood before health workers and made a direct appeal: stop the myths, start the treatment.
Kawooya called on health workers across Uganda to intensify community education on clubfoot, a condition present at birth in which one or both feet turn inward and downward, according to the Nile Post. She urged particular attention to expectant mothers, saying early intervention can fully correct the condition and allow affected children to walk and develop without lasting physical limitation.
The minister rejected explanations rooted in witchcraft, which the Nile Post reported are still widely used to account for the condition in some communities. These beliefs, Kawooya said, delay children from receiving the medical care that could change the course of their lives.
Clubfoot is treatable — most effectively in the first weeks and months of life — through a non-surgical method known as the Ponseti technique, which uses a sequence of casts to gradually reposition the foot. When families turn to traditional or supernatural explanations first, that window narrows.
Where albinism intersects
The minister's remarks carry particular weight for the albinism community. Children with albinism in Uganda and across Sub-Saharan Africa are among those most exposed to witchcraft-based explanations for physical difference — explanations that delay medical attention and, in more dangerous contexts, place children at risk of harm.
Kawooya's public rejection of supernatural framing for a visible, correctable condition is consistent with a broader public health argument: that medical facts, communicated clearly and early, reduce the harm caused by myth. The Nile Post reported her remarks as a call directed specifically at health workers, positioning them as the front line of that communication.
The setting — a district-level engagement in Luweero — suggests the message was aimed not at national policy circles but at the community workers who speak directly with families.
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